Qatar’s Khalifa Saleh Al Attiyah and his French co-driver Xavier Panseri in action yesterday.
South Racing-built Can-Ams filled the top five places in the Andalucia Rally, round one of the 2021 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies.
Outright victory fell to the American racer Austin Jones and his Brazilian navigator Gustavo Gugelmin in their Monster Energy Can-Am Maverick XRS. Jones became embroiled in a gripping tussle over the varied southern Spanish terrain with Qatar’s Khalifa Saleh Al Attiyah and his experienced French codriver Xavier Panseri.
AlAttiyah led midway through the rally, but Jones hit back over the last two days to secure the win and Al Attiyah finished second in his South Racing Can-Am Team Maverick.
The Dutch duo of Kees Koolen and Mirjam Pol crewed their South Racing Can-Am to the final place on the podium. Chile’s Hernan Garces and Juan Pablo Latrach were fourth in their Maverick and Argentina’s David Zille and Bruno Jacomy rounded off the top five for the South Racing Can-Am Team. Lucas Del Rio and Marcello Scola crewed a second allChilean Can-Am to ninth place in the FIA T4 category.
Andre Thewessen and Stijn Bastings ran a South Racing Can-Am for the first time and completed the event in 13th. A first day crash wrecked Aron Domzala’s chances of winning the event, but the Pole recovered strongly to set three impressive stage times on his way to 14th. The Spanish pairing of Fernando Alvarez and Antonio Garcia crewed the only South Racing Can-Am XRS entered in the FIA T3 category.
They reached the finish in fifth place, in a category won by Spain’s Cristina Gutierrez. Action got underway with an eight-kilometre qualifying stage to determine the starting order for the first of four offroad legs.
Domzala started well in his Monster Energy Can-Am to hold 11th overall and first in the FIA T4 category. Al-Attiyah was the fastest of the South Racing Team cars, nine seconds adrift, and Austin Jones came home in third.
Leg one consisted of three sections that totalled 196km (67km, 73km and 56km) with a neutralisation section after the first two parts, as the route looped around the remote countryside from the Villamartin base.
Much of the route was used at the inaugural Andalucia Rally last autumn. Rally officials stopped the stage for security reasons after 177km, but it failed to prevent Al Attiyah claiming the fastest time in T4 and an outright lead of 40 seconds. In overall standings, Koolen moved up to third and Garces and Zille were fifth and sixth. Del Rio, Thewessen and Domzala were 10th, 18th and 19th.
